Evidence for God

I read through this , full of sangria. Did someone mention clay tablerts? What happens if they get wet? Does God become Od? Which becomes Odd. Which is em, odd.

fullbookjacket said:

My view of proof is that it requires incontrovertibility.

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That usually works okay, but even in math and formal reasoning it may be too strong because sometimes the rules for acceptable proof may tighten by consensus. For instance some mathematicians don't accept the use of the law of excluded middle because it can result in non-constructive proof.

Mathematician Kurt Gödel for instance, formalised an ontological proof for the existence of God. The proof goes something like this:
These statements can be represented mathematically using modal logic, and the proof is meticulous -- if you are happy with nonconstructive proofs. I'm not, which is why I make such a fuss when I see definitions of God like Gödel's one above.

benbradley said:

The person who posts a word with the most syllables wins...

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supersiliisppacchisdoseses

even if the sound of it really is atrocious

Ruv Draba said:

That usually works okay, but even in math and formal reasoning it may be too strong because sometimes the rules for acceptable proof may tighten by consensus. For instance some mathematicians don't accept the use of the law of excluded middle because it can result in non-constructive proof.

Mathematician Kurt Gödel for instance, formalised an ontological proof for the existence of God. The proof goes something like this:

God, by definition, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist.
​

These statements can be represented mathematically using modal logic, and the proof is meticulous -- if you are happy with nonconstructive proofs. I'm not, which is why I make such a fuss when I see definitions of God like Gödel's one above.

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Yes it's a bit like 'pin the tail on the donkey' cept there's no donkey, you're harassed by a bunch of animal rights activists, and you're pin is too small....

Yes, a bit like

I thought "orthodoxy" was whatever I think is the true belief. And "heresy", whatever I think is the wrong belief? If I'm religious, that is.

And Orthodox Christianity is referred to that way by other Christians with a nod and a wink. At least if they know what the term means. Because they obviously don't think their belief is false.

Am I wrong?

Ruv Draba said:

(Ruv is quoting a famous smartass)

God, by definition, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist.
​

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Just for reference, as an atheist I would view such statements as evidence only of the need to cut funding to university Philosophy departments.

zornhau said:

Just for reference, as an atheist I would view such statements as evidence only of the need to cut funding to university Philosophy departments.

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When it comes to logic, I can be of assistance. This proof is a lot older than that. This proof dates back to Avicenna or arguably S:t Anselm. All these guys had studied Aristotle, so they knew it was bullshit, even when they formulated it. Universities back then where first and foremost places where priests practised rhetoric and learned clever ways to impress the peasants. They all "knew" God existed, so that wasn't the issue. They didn't need to prove Gods existence. Serious attempts came much later, with Descartes and Spinoza. As long as proofs were powerful and simple enough to impress the peasants these guys didn't mind skimping over the finer details of logic or academic rigour. Nobody could argue it didn't help defend the faith, which was the important thing.

The Ontological Argument is a conflation of the various types of existence. Abstractions, ie ideas can be said to exist. Anything we can talk about and reference is meaningful. Therefore it isn't wrong to say that the most "perfect thing" exists or the "greatest good" exists. The logic of course breaks when we then, by sleight of hand, replace the abstract with the concrete, and pretend like we have established that there actually exists a perfect thing or the greatest good in reality, as if it ever could be tangible. This is a very basic error in logic and is easily spotted for someone trained. It won't take many who've studied Aristotelian logic in a room, to see the flaw in the argument. You don't even need to be a professional logician or one who is world famous. This leads me to conclude that they didn't, and Gödel didn't.

I find it hard to believe that Gödel couldn't follow this logic. If I can, and I'll never be close to the logician as he was, then he sure as hell could. All I've got is a measly degree in logic. To put it mildly, he was brilliant. I suspect it's the same deal as with CS Lewis. CS Lewis was a brilliant academic and writer. He did not make sloppy mistakes in his academic papers. His logic in "Mere Christianity" leaks like a sieve. I don't think he did it out of ignorance or stupidity. These are people smarter than most of us, certainly me. He must have had ulterior motives, as did Gödel when it formulated what he must have known was blatantly flawed proofs. These were not adolescent blunders. There's clearly more to the story on both of them.

Ruv Draba said:

Mathematician Kurt Gödel for instance, formalised an ontological proof for the existence of God. The proof goes something like this:

God, by definition, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist.
​

These statements can be represented mathematically using modal logic, and the proof is meticulous -- if you are happy with nonconstructive proofs. I'm not, which is why I make such a fuss when I see definitions of God like Gödel's one above.

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While Gödel wrote about it, the ontological proof of god is much older than him, and despite all his efforts fails on numerous levels. The most readily obvious, and thus glaring failure of this argument is that it can only prove logically the existence of an entity whose existence is the greatest possible. It does not provide anything about any other predicate, so it does not prove the existence of anything resembling what one would call god. It only proves that that which exists with the greatest possible existence, really does exists. Kind of a no-brainer really.

zornhau said:

Just for reference, as an atheist I would view such statements as evidence only of the need to cut funding to university Philosophy departments.

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That's a bit premature. If anything, it shows that you shouldn't let mathematicians engage in philosophy. They might hurt themselves.
Though to be fair, it hasn't been invented by Gödel. Even Anselm of Canterbury used it, Theologians haven't had much else to do for centuries but try to invent new arguments for the existence of god. The Ontological argument though was even criticised by Thomas Aquinas, and if that doesn't show an argument to be bad, i don't know what does.
It's kind of like an argument for creationism showing up on the AIG websites list of "Arguments we think creationists shouldn't use".

DrZoidberg said:

These are people smarter than most of us, certainly me. He must have had ulterior motives, as did Gödel when it formulated what he must have known was blatantly flawed proofs. These were not adolescent blunders. There's clearly more to the story on both of them.

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While ulterior motives are one explanation, i think it's nothing as sinister, just human nature. Studies have shown that all humans have a blind spot when it comes to examining arguments which confirm their beliefs. It doesn't matter for example if you're a hard-ass conservative or bleeding heart liberal, if you hear an argument in support of your political stance, you'll swallow crap that'd make you laugh out loud if brought forth in support of the opposition. It's the same for religions, hell, even post-purchase rationalisation is an example of this. Some people are better at critical thinking than others, and some are worse, but no-one is always rational about everything, it's just human nature. Everyone has some blind spots. That might be about politics or about religion or about vegetarianism.
For Gödel and Lewis, who were very sure of their theism, those arguments probably sounded convincing, simply because they didn't apply the same standards of critical thinking they applied to their other work.

DrZoidberg said:

I thought "orthodoxy" was whatever I think is the true belief. And "heresy", whatever I think is the wrong belief? If I'm religious, that is.

And Orthodox Christianity is referred to that way by other Christians with a nod and a wink. At least if they know what the term means. Because they obviously don't think their belief is false.

Am I wrong?

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Well, there are two christian sects which carry the word in their official names, so they'd probably be the ones with the right to decide what it means. (The Russian and Greek orthodox churches)

Lhun said:

While Gödel wrote about it, the ontological proof of god is much older than him

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Indeed. Hence my use of the word 'formalised'. The argument dates back to St Anselm, and the much under-overlooked Persian scholar Abd Allah Ibn Sinna (Avicenna) before him.

The most readily obvious, and thus glaring failure of this argument is that it can only prove logically the existence of an entity whose existence is the greatest possible.

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For me, it doesn't prove even that.

Lhun said:

While ulterior motives are one explanation, i think it's nothing as sinister, just human nature. Studies have shown that all humans have a blind spot when it comes to examining arguments which confirm their beliefs. It doesn't matter for example if you're a hard-ass conservative or bleeding heart liberal, if you hear an argument in support of your political stance, you'll swallow crap that'd make you laugh out loud if brought forth in support of the opposition. It's the same for religions, hell, even post-purchase rationalisation is an example of this. Some people are better at critical thinking than others, and some are worse, but no-one is always rational about everything, it's just human nature. Everyone has some blind spots. That might be about politics or about religion or about vegetarianism.
For Gödel and Lewis, who were very sure of their theism, those arguments probably sounded convincing, simply because they didn't apply the same standards of critical thinking they applied to their other work.

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I wasn't implying that anything sinister was going on, but Gödel was a logician! Not only that, but one of the best. That's a pretty massive blind spot, if it makes him make such a basic beginner's error. I don't buy it. It's one thing if he's writing a book and he messes up the proof-reading on one of the equations on a page, and his proof-readers mess up the proof-reading on the same page. But this is a mathematical proof! It's not long. Any student of logic should be able to spot it at the first glance, and probably do. Why didn't they tell him? Why didn't anybody around him tell him? What about his friends? This proof as it stands make him look like an idiot. My guess is that they did tell him, and for whatever reason, he didn't care. We can only speculate on why.

DrZoidberg said:

I wasn't implying that anything sinister was going on, but Gödel was a logician!

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Symbolic logic is like algebra. Just because we invent a formula and can confirm that it has certain behaviours does not mean that the formula applies to anything real. Gödel was an idealist. There are several things he assumed about his existence proof that others (like me) might disagree with. For instance, I reject his definition of 'greater' because I don't think that any two intelligent people will necessarily agree on what 'greater' means.

For another objection, he defines 'God' as a being for whom all positive statements are true. For me that's not a definition because he hasn't told me what all the positive statements are or how to enumerate them all, or even how to check whether a candidate statement is positive or not. I'm not even sure that such a claim of simultaneously holding all positive statements isn't self-contradictory. Or if it were true, how could I know that it's true?

Thirdly, he plays a game with 'contingent' and 'necessary' truths that I'm not sure I accept. A contingent truth is something that might be true, while a necessary truth is something that must be true. While might and must be true mean particular things to Godel, I'm not entirely sure what might be true means to me; but must be true means something different to me than it does to him.

Lastly, I don't like ontological arguments because rather than playing with things, they more often play with words for things. So the language we use, our shades of meaning, our ideals, beliefs and ignorance, can end up determining the results.

Ruv Draba said:

For me, it doesn't prove even that.

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It does, as long as you accept "existing" as being a predicate.
Try it out with any other predicate.
Smurfs are, by definition, that for which nothing bluer exists. If we can imagine a Smurf of any colour, we can imagine one which is more Smurfish by being blue. Therefore, Smurfs are blue.
The sillyness of this argument comes from first defining the result, i.e. we define [entity] to be the epitome of [predicate]. Then we argue that [entity] really must be the epitome of [predicate] because if we can imagine it being less, we can always imagine it being greater, and thus fitting the definition.
Of course, if we use any other predicate than existence, it's just being bloody stupid. No-ones going to be very impressed by a logical proof that we can imagine a Smurf which is the bluest of all possible blue things. It's only by using the predicate "existing" the argument sounds profound.
If we want to the argument for Smurfs, we'd first need to establish that a) Smurfs are real and b) they fit the definition. By using "existing" as the predicate, it's possible to weasel out of that obligation, making the argument appear to the casual observer as if it actually provided logical proof of something existing in reality, while all that was actually accomplished by switching existing for blue was to completely void "existing" of any meaning for this argument.
Now, "existing" is a predicate of an object, which it may possess in greater or smaller quantity, and the epitome of which is called "god". That's pretty much it. The most "existing" object in the world might be a common slug living on the leaves of a grapevine in northern Italy. That would make it god according to this argument.
Now, the proponents of the argument usually object by claiming that the god defined by this argument is the most "perfect" or the most "great" entity. That, however is logically invalid, since it is a collection of predicates, which would require logical proof that they have to coincide. The ontological argument doesn't provide any of that proof of course.

So, in conclusion, the ontological argument can proof the existence of the most "real" entity in existence by pure logic. Which is silly, since it is tautological.
It can not prove the existence of the usual omnimax god, since the logic only works if applied to a single predicate.

Ruv Draba said:

I'm not even sure that such a claim of simultaneously holding all positive statements isn't self-contradictory. Or if it were true, how could I know that it's true?

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It is self-contradictory of course. Actual definition of gods are the best friends of the strong atheist, since a god which has defined properties can be disproven (in principle). It is very easy to disprove the classical christian omnimax god for example. Of course, not every defined property immediately disproves a god. Saying god is blue for example (never change a working predicate) does not offer much to work with. A panentheistic god on the other hand is impossible to disprove.

Addendum:

Ruv Draba said:

Thirdly, he plays a game with 'contingent' and 'necessary' truths that I'm not sure I accept. A contingent truth is something that might be true, while a necessary truth is something that must be true. While might and must be true mean particular things to Godel, I'm not entirely sure what might be true means to me; but must be true means something different to me than it does to him.

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Not necessarily, "contingent" is also used synonymously to "dependent on".

This has become like the AGW hoax: It's true because I say it is. Just because someone believes something does not mean that is true. The facts have to match the reasoning and the conclusion, and relevant facts can't be ignored.

DrZoidberg said:

<snip> This proof as it stands make him look like an idiot. My guess is that they did tell him, and for whatever reason, he didn't care. We can only speculate on why.

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Because his theism was a deeply held belief, which he cherished. That's how these blind spots work. People are very very rarely able to recognize them and no-one can give them up. Change the subject around, but not give them up. We don't want to believe we're wrong (it's how used car salesmen survive), and we're even less willing to believe we're wrong if it's regarding a subject we feel strongly about. On the other hand, we're very uncritical when it comes to examining claims which confirm our beliefs. It's how the whole UFO/WTC/Moon Landing conspiracy community exists for example. There's a deep belief that there are conspiracies all around them, keeping them out of the loop, and any claim confirming that is taken at face value. Or take Newagers and claims about crystal skulls and natural remedies. Or conservatives and Palin. Or liberals and Gore. Or engineers who think they found the way to disprove the theory of evolution, or the perpetual motion machine. Or.... (i could go on here)
People are selectively rational. We do not apply the same amount of reason to everything.

Now, with Lewis, i'm quite willing to suspect he'd be willing to intentionally lie. Lying for Jesus is a time-honoured tradition among christians. But in Gödels case i don't suspect any intentional foul play. I'd say it's just a case of him being well-meaning but misguided. Not to mention out of his field of expertise.
Take Pascal as another example. Not a guy anyone could call stupid, and yet he's famous for his wager, one of the most hilariously inept arguments for belief in the christian god (not the existence of the same) ever made.

Well, there are two christian sects which carry the word in their official names, so they'd probably be the ones with the right to decide what it means. (The Russian and Greek orthodox churches)

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Russian and Greek Orthodox are the same. They are in communion with the other. Orthodox is Orthodox. There are Russian Orthodox, Greek, American, Bulgarian, Antiochian Orthodox, Serbian, Syrian, Turkish etc. Different region, same faith.

1054ish, when the schism took place and people had to come up with words to designate and differentiate themselves from the other, the folks living in Rome decided to call themselves, "Roman Catholic" while the folks living in the jurisdictions of Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople and Alexandria called themselves, "Orthodox".

A sect is a much broader sweep and usually implies "division" or wider opposing and conflicting belief. Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy are sects.

Lhun said:

Take Pascal as another example. Not a guy anyone could call stupid, and yet he's famous for his wager, one of the most hilariously inept arguments for belief in the christian god (not the existence of the same) ever made.

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Not just to keep defending Christians here, but I think we can cut Pascal some slack. He's very much a child of his time. Everybody in Europe accepted that there was only one God, Catholics and Protestants, the same God. The arguments was only about how to worship it. Not it's existence. They assumed that outside Europe the "savages" who worshipped other gods were simply wrong and uneducated.

On a binary scale where on one side is God, and always the same God, and on the other side is nothing, then Pascal's wager makes a lot of sense. Based on philosophy of the day, I think Pascal was doing all right.

Of course anybody using Pascal's Wager today needs to be slapped severely. And I have seen it happen, and I do cringe each time. But Pascal himself rocks!

Ephrem Rodriguez said:

A sect is a much broader sweep and usually implies "division" or wider opposing and conflicting belief. Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy are sects.

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That's the christian position. I consider any subdivision within a group who consider themselves to belong to the same faith a sect. Because to be honest, i can't be bothered to remember what dozens of religions big enough for subdivisions want their subdivisions called.
Though the really broad divisions you are referring to are usually called denominations.

DrZoidberg said:

On a binary scale where on one side is God, and always the same God, and on the other side is nothing, then Pascal's wager makes a lot of sense. Based on philosophy of the day, I think Pascal was doing all right.

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No he wasn't. The problem with the multitude of possible gods might be the biggest one, but it's not the only one. There's others, for example the fact that it's untrue to say that belief in a god has not cost associated with it, or even theological problems, such as the question whether belief in a god out of pure opportunism would be acceptable to the god. (Prattchett has a hilarious footnote about this argument in one book, mentioning how, as the philosopher who invented the argument died, he was welcomed to the afterlife by a mob of gods who wanted to show exactly what they thought of smart-asses like him)
Arguments for a god or for the belief in a god are usually the result of believers trying to justify their beliefs. They're rationalisations, dreamt up by people who depend on reason a lot in the rest of their thinking, and are (probably unconsciously) uncomfortable having beliefs without good arguments for them. So they invent arguments.

Lhun said:

That's the christian position. I consider any subdivision within a group who consider themselves to belong to the same faith a sect. Because to be honest, i can't be bothered to remember what dozens of religions big enough for subdivisions want their subdivisions called.
Though the really broad divisions you are referring to are usually called denominations.

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Well, Russian and Greek Orthodox are both Eastern Orthodox. Eastern Orthodox is sort of the name on the desk. I just didn't want people to think that Russian and Greek Orthodox were fighting or not in communion with one another.


Wiki wants to further confuse it:

The historical usage of the term sect in Christendom has had pejorative connotations, referring to a group or movement with heretical beliefs or practices that deviate from those of groups considered orthodox.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sect#cite_note-0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sect#cite_note-0
Although in past it was mostly used to refer to religious groups, it has since expanded and in modern culture can refer to any organization that breaks away from a larger one to follow a different set of rules and principles. The term is occasionally used in a malicious way to suggest the broken-off group follows a more negative path than the original.

In my experience, Pascal's wager is the number one argument thrown out by Christians. It's very frustrating. I usually ask them why they aren't Muslims, seeing as the Muslim hell is even worse than the Christian one. I've never gotten a satisfactory answer. They usually just say that Islam is ridiculous and shouldn't be considered. I, on the other hand, find Islam to be Christianity with the parts Mohamed thought were ridiculous taken out.

Lhun said:

. A panentheistic god on the other hand is impossible to disprove.

".

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Cool. I'm a pantheist!

Different Christian individuals, denominations and sects approach the proof for the existence of God in different ways. Generally speaking, the Evangelicals tend to bring Aquinus' arguments to their logical conclusion. They see the natural world and the bible as something that can not be separated from God's reality. In other words, Genesis would then be necessarily "literally" about the creation of the natural world.

If you ask a Roman Catholic they can approach Genesis and see that the natural world and Genesis are separate. A Roman Catholic will not find the big bang theory, the age of the earth or evolution as something that contradicts Genesis because Genesis is not to be taken as a literal account as to "how" God created the world. The same goes for the Orthodox more or less.

However, where Aquinus steps in, you have a change in theological language. In Orthodoxy they use "negative" language in order to prove, less what God is and more what God is not. This is done to help preserve what God is, which is, in regards to what He is "within" Himself in and of Himself - a Holy Mystery. For example. God is in and around a tree but God is NOT a tree. We can not say to what degree God is not in and around the tree because (generally speaking) there is no test-tube fit to contain the uncontainable God.

However, when it comes to Aquinus and the Roman Catholics, though they will see Genesis as something that is not necessarily an account of "how" God created the natural world, they do see science (the study of God's creation) as something that can quantify the attributes of God. That's why you have Aquinus taking quite seriously the answer to the question, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

Different flavors of protestantism take Aquinus further by saying that to deny their literal interpretation of what Genesis says is to deny the creator. Though most protestants don't have many formal dogmas they (generally speaking) do set up a certain stigma against an interpretation counter to their literal approach and some will even go so far as to say that the anti-literal approach is "anti-Christian". So for them, to even "teach" evolution is a rejection of God's existence. To even embrace any scientific theory that states something counter to what they call literal would be labeled heretical by them. In the extremes you have people believing science to be "of the devil" or one of the devils "tricks", insofar as the science says the natural world contradicts their theological interpretation.

When Galileo was doing his thing, Martin Luther called him all sorts of names because to Luther's approach, the scriptures were quite plain in stating that the Earth was the center of the universe and Galileo was counter to what he thought scripture was clear about - the Sun revolves around the Earth as does the entire cosmos. Calvin pitched the same fork:

"Those who assert that 'the earth moves and turns'...[are] motivated by 'a spirit of bitterness, contradiction, and faultfinding;' possessed by the devil, they aimed 'to pervert the order of nature.'" - Calvin

However, you will be hard pressed to find many protestants, though there are some, that see the sun, moon and stars as being younger that the creation of the Earth. And even fewer who believe, though there are probably some, that the entire cosmos revolves around the Earth.

Even the various views on "heaven" and "hell" are interesting and shed light on the way in which people see God's reality as being inseparable from our linear or "natural" reality. If you ask an evangelical where heaven is, some, quite literally, believe that it is "up" while hell would be "down". More than this, they see "hell" as being in the earth because of the various descriptions of Sheol and Hades (synonymous words often translated as, "hell") in the bible.

In Roman Catholicism they too have a locational and somewhat "quantitative" and geographical approach to heaven and hell. At the council of Florence, when the Orthodox were under siege by the muslims and requested help, Rome said that they would help provided the Orthodox recant their beliefs (on a bunch of stuff) and one of those beliefs was their teachings on heaven and hell. Rome at that time was teaching hell to be a place where unbelievers were immediately sent if they weren't "believers" or had committed some mortal sin and entered the afterlife unrepentant without being covered by the sacrament of confession. This "hell" was a place where the unbeliever was tortured by demons etc. It was a place devoid of God's presence.

However, an Orthodox bishop refused saying that there is nowhere you can go that is devoid of God's presence. Even if you descend into Sheol/Hades (which is not "true" hell) God is still present. More than this, the Orthodox had problems with calling "heaven", "the Kingdom of God" because a "Kingdom" is something that is "created". If you read the Septuagint, the phrase "Kingdom of God" is not there, not once. Instead, a more literal translation would be the "rule" or "reign" of God. When you see God's true "Kingdom" as being His rule or reign then you see that God's rule/reign is also "uncreated". A Kingdom would be "created". It would be a place wherein God dwelled and "contained" the uncontainable God.

Helps make more clear what the Jesus, who is the Christ, said when he said things like, the "Kingdom" of God is within (or among) you.

What he is more so saying is that the RULE or REIGN of God is within (or among) you.

Anyway, there's a lot of different "Christian" views on how you can or can't "prove" His existence and there are a lot of cultural and historical conditions that sort of massage the way in which those views are expressed, digested and understood. Take that and throw them against the post-enlightenment, age of reason, "modern" social programs and you have a high art version of the Jerry Springer show.

Two thousand years from now both sides might look like cavemen arguing over whether or not there ever will or won't be a way to touch the moon. Both are probably right insofar as the vacuum of their experiences go.

Lhun said:

It does, as long as you accept "existing" as being a predicate.

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It requires me to accept more than that -- for instance, that it's allright to run quantifiers over statements. E.g. 'Let us call that entity for which all statements of blueness are true, a smurf'. This definition contains a quantifier ('all') applied to 'statements of blueness'. I don't think I can accept it as legitimate unless there is at least a repeatable method to tell me whether a statement I read is a statement of blueness.
When it comes to reasoning about the world, I like being a constructivist in proofs. If you want to talk about 'all sentences with property A', then I want a list of those sentences, or some way of constructing them, or at least some way of recognising them. Arm-waving alone just won't do.

If we want to the argument for Smurfs, we'd first need to establish that a) Smurfs are real and b) they fit the definition.

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Here you're saying that you don't like ontological arguments either. I understand your dislike, since I share it. In nature if we want to consider whether (for example) black holes exist, I want an unabiguous, finite definition (so Gödel's fails on that), a working model for how it might operate to help me recognise them (Gödel didn't supply it), and then I'll happily go looking for black holes. Black holes being black we may not be able to see them, but the working model will help us find evidence for their existence, and the unambiguous definition will let us test the evidence to see whether it's evidence for the object described.

However, in certain human-constructed domains (like math), I'm happy to accept an ontological argument at times. There's an ontological proof about the existence of irrational numbers (numbers that can't be expressed as fractions of whole numbers) which doesn't leave me too upset because I already know that it's not the only proof we can come up with. Gödel did a famous ontological proof in his Incompleteness Theorems in which he showed by a clever counting-argument that there's far more truth and falsity in math (say) than we have language to express, and that worse, there's so much of it that computers can't find their way through all of it. I was fine with that too, because he kept it constructive every step of the way -- he didn't just talk about 'all theorems' and 'all proofs'. He showed us how to construct and order them.

Actual definition of gods are the best friends of the strong atheist, since a god which has defined properties can be disproven (in principle).

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I would suggest that actual definitions of anything are the friend of the rationalist, since without them we can't really say much.

Not necessarily, "contingent" is also used synonymously to "dependent on".

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Yes. In Modal Logic, 'contingent truth' is written as '◊'. So 'It might rain', could be written as '◊Raining', while 'It always rains' could be written as '□Raining' A common interpretation is that we can enumerate 'possible worlds' in which some things are true and some false. So we can write 'In all possible worlds where it is raining, it is also cloudy.' '□(Raining→Cloudy)'. In Modal Logic, a possible world is described by whatever's true in it, so 'it depends' means 'it's possible'.

Gödel's formalisation of St. Anselm's ontological proof uses exactly such symbols. They're very handy symbols to explore ways of reasoning, but if we apply them to reality then I have problems. To me 'possible' means 'I've shown (in model at least) that this can be done', or 'I have strong if indirect evidence that this exists'. But that's not what Gödel means. He means 'I can conceive of such things being consistent with other things'. It's the sort of 'possibility' we use when we write about fantasy or SF. It's not the one I use in daily life.

But 'necessity' causes me problems too. Gödel's use of '□' means 'For logical consistency it can never be otherwise'. In discussing reality, my use of '□' means 'Within the bounds of exhaustive testing, it is always so'. So I'm happy with statements that □(Mass→Gravity), or □(Living→Breathing), but my '□' necessity operator just means across the domain I've explored. If I explore a bigger domain I might find mass without gravity or life without breath.

Gödel's □ and ◊ form an idealist's modal logic that embraces a Platonic philosophy in which beauty and consistency dictate what must or might be true. He makes strong use of the excluded middle, of stating existing without showing how to construct or identify it. Empirically, nature often pulls the rug out from under us when we start talking that way.

I much prefer to go and look.

Ephrem Rodriguez said:

there's a lot of different "Christian" views on how you can or can't "prove" His existence and there are a lot of cultural and historical conditions that sort of massage the way in which those views are expressed, digested and understood. Take that and throw them against the post-enlightenment, age of reason, "modern" social programs and you have a high art version of the Jerry Springer show.

Two thousand years from now both sides might look like cavemen arguing over whether or not there ever will or won't be a way to touch the moon. Both are probably right insofar as the vacuum of their experiences go.

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Thanks, Ephrem.

I think it's true that Christian thought (being 'the thought of Christians') continues to develop. But secular thought (being 'thought outside religion') seems to be developing faster than most Christian thought is. The more prescriptive Christian thought has been about the world, the more this has caused strain for the more authoritarian Christian thinkers.

In terms of what's true and what's not, I'm very relaxed at having a range of human thought from the credulous to the skeptical. I think it's very helpful.

But in terms of how to treat one another, I'm less sanguine. Thought that encourages cruelty or indifference on grounds of strained and largely unsupported arguments about how reality is, strikes me as immensely arrogant. It seems to me that when our dogma isn't working, the biggest benefit of admitting ignorance is that we don't exclude compassion.